PON-3’s Turf was strangely bigger than I remembered. The walls were lined with dark blue booths and coffee tables. In the center of the restaurant were seven massive tables to seat large groups of people. Three of the tables were to the left of the entrance and the other four were to the right. The bar that Twilight was excitied about was in front of the table furthest to the left which was the table our friends had chosen to take. ”How convenient,” I thought with a smile.

Twilight walked towards the bar, but was immediately stopped by Rainbow Dash. I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for Twilight. She was obviously nervous around her, especially when Rainbow goes into her little flirty mode. I thanked God I wasn’t trapped in a mess like that. Twilight looked a little bit uncomfortable and was trying to subtly edge away from Rainbow. I couldn’t help but crack a smile and a little chuckle.

As I continued my walk to the bar, I was greeted by some of my old friends. The first person who came up to me was a poofy haired girl named Pinkie Pie. She was one of the nicest people I had ever met. She would often read through my writings and give me useful feedback when she was on break at Sugarcube Corner. Without her help, I doubt I would have ever gotten any my books published. She ran forward and gave me a major bear hug. “Hey Pinkie. How’ve you been?” I asked.

“Great Sweetie Shimmy, and you?”

"I’ve been on the road almost all the time, traveling, trying to come up with inspiration for my next MLP book."

"Don’t worry Sunny, it’ll come to you."

"Yeah." I began to fan myself. The bar was considerably warmer than the outside. "Damn, it’s hot." I took off my leather jacket. "If it stays hot like this, I might have to take off more clothes."

"Oh," Pinkie said in a seductive tone. "Can’t miss that now." We both laughed.

Pinkie has been making perverted jokes since before she moved away to her baking university in Fillydelphia. This was fine, except me and Rainbow Dash were the only ones who seemed to catch on with those jokes and when I pointed them out, everyone dismissed them and labeled me as the girl who cried pervert. I had given up trying to expose her shenanigans years ago. "So how long are gonna be staying here?" I asked.

“I’m leaving tonight Shimmy. My family and I are going to visit my sister Maud. She lives out of town."

"Well at least your here now."

"Yeah," Pinkie looked around, “I’m gonna go talk to Twilight before Rainbow starts harassing her again." Twilight’s strange feelings towards Dash were more apparent than I thought. Pinkie walked over to Twilight. She seemed a bit more eager to talk to her instead of Rainbow which a little strange but understandable. A girl I knew named Applejack joined them. Rainbow had apparently sticked close to Twilight as she, Pinkie and Applejack talked away. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about at all, but it wasn’t any of my business anyway.

I sat down at one of the seats around the whole table. To my right was another friend of mine, Rarity. She was a very generous person from what I remembered. To my left was a woman named Fluttershy. She always had a bit of a habit of trying to make people feel good much like Pinkie. Though this was usually a good thing, she never seemed to know when to stop, especially when it came to caring for animals. It sometimes became a little annoying for me, and I knew for a fact that Twilight’s dog Spike felt the same way. I turned to Rarity. “Hey there, how’ve you been?” I asked.

“Absolutely great darling.” She smiled. She was practically vibrating with excitement. “And guess what, Sunset? Carasol Botique is officially making it’s fifth branch in Seaddle!” She announced excitedly not even waiting for me to reply. I could easily tell she wanted to announce that to as many people as she could.

“That’s great,” I said. “I always knew that you had the talent for it."

She laughed. “Thank you darling. I now get to start teaching fashion at our old high school."

"Congratulations," I continued. "I’ve wanted an excuse to visit Canterlot High again, and now I have one." Rarity smiled.

"Hey there Sunset." I heard Fluttershy call out to me. “I heard that your a writer now. Is that true?" Rarity and I turned to Fluttershy.

"Yep, you heard the truth. So what’ve you been up to?"

"I officially own Manehattan’s veterinarian clinic." Fluttershy said proudly. "I came to take a nostalgia trip for a few days."

“Cool." I replied as I looked around the table. I noticed that most of the people I expected to see here were nowhere to be found. "Where’s everyone else?” Fluttershy pointed to a door across from the bar.

"They’re all playing poker in there. Want to play a round?”

“Maybe later." I said.

"Are you hungry?”

“Not at the moment no.”

Fluttershy looked around for a moment and back to me as if she was scanning the room. “Hey Sunset, did you hear about all the bizarre things that have been occurring lately?” Fluttershy said in a raised voice so everyone else could hear her. Rarity, Twilight, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash turned their attention to Fluttershy.

“Like what?" I asked with a spark of interest in my voice.

“Well, there have been all these suspicious disappearances going on lately and most of the cases were given too vague descriptions." Rarity, Twilight, Applejack, Pinkie and Rainbow all came to listen to Fluttershy.

“What do you mean?”

“Take the five missing joggers for example. You guys know about that right?"

“Yeah.”Twilight interjected. “Five joggers went missing near the zoo in the northwest part of Canterlot."

“Oh, I remember that,” Pinkie said, “That happened a couple of days ago.” Rarity and Applejack nodded. Rainbow looked clueless as usual.

“Yeah, but they didn’t go missing near the zoo. They went missing in the forest near the exit of town. You see, a day or so before they went ’jogging’, my brother brought them over to my house and I told them about this weird looking wolf I saw near the entrance of Canterlot."

“What wolf?" Twilight asked.

“Well, when I was getting into Canterlot, I saw this enormous wolf jump in front of my SUV. I swerved out of it’s way and barely missed the fucker." Fluttershy said dramatically. This was the very first time I had ever heard Fluttershy swear in my entire life, maybe she’s changed a lot since then. "But when I came to a stop, I could see it clearly. That thing was twice the size of a normal wolf. And its eyes...” Fluttershy paused seemingly to only add to the drama. “I swear that thing was just staring at me and it looked mad as holy hell. But then it just walked away like nothing ever happened at all."

“Like It didn’t see you anymore?” Rainbow asked.

“No, like it just didn’t care that a huge SUV was about to run it over." Fluttershy answered.

“What does that have to do with the missing joggers?” Twilight asked.

“Well I told them about it and they all wanted to see it for themselves.” Fluttershy said. “They packed all kinds of shit like hunting knives and crap like that in case the wolf got too close. One of them brought a rifle too. I told them not to go,” Fluttershy paused again, but this time I could instantly tell she wasn’t trying to be dramatic. She looked like she blames herself for what came next. “I told them that it was a very bad idea, but they were so determined and excited that they wouldn’t listen to a thing I said.” There was nothing but bitter silence.

“You think it got them?” I finally asked

“I think so,” Fluttershy said sadly.

“Do you think that has something to do with the other cases?” Twilight asked.

“I don’t know,” Fluttershy answered thoughtfully. “But it’s just one of the many weird cases that have been going on around here."

We all stayed in our seats in silence pondering what we had just heard. Twilight looked especially troubled. I couldn’t imagine what was being stirred in her head. We all turned to the sound of a door opening. Most of our other friends had entered. Twilight walked to the bar with Applejack following her. Everyone in the poker room, came out shortly after.

Instead of meeting up with everyone, I decided it would be best to get to know Twilight a bit more. Twilight and I were going to stay together in our hotel room for a couple weeks, so remaking friends with her seemed like a pretty great idea. I walked to an empty seat near Twilight. “So Twi, you having fun?" I asked.

“It’s actually going better than I thought it would go.” Twilight pointed to the bar. “Shall we?”

“Sure, I sure as hell could use a drink." We ordered a few drinks. Applejack watched as Twilight and I began drinking our first round.

“A little early to start drinking, don’t you think sugarcube?” She said.

"It’s never too early to drink. Haven’t you learned anything from college?” Twilight asked. AJ shook her head, but couldn’t suppress a chuckle. We continued talking about college life and how we managed to get through it all. After a short while, Twilight was obviously drunk, and I barely felt a thing. Applejack just drank water and cider. As Twilight and Applejack continued talking to each other, I started thinking about Fluttershy’s story and her assumption. I started wondering where all those people might have been. Maybe there was some kind of gang kidnapping people for sexual ransoms. Or maybe there was some kind of occult stealing people for their evil deeds, and maybe, just maybe, they were visitors from Equestia. None of the explanations I came up with explained the wolf, though.

“Let’s go to the zoo!” explained a very drunk Twilight. “It’ll be fun.”

“No thanks sugarcube,” Applejack said. “Ah’m gonna play poker. You should come.”

“No,” Twilight replied before I could even open my mouth. “We-we’re going to the zooey zoo.”

“I’ll take care of her,” I said. “We’ll be back after a quick trip.” Applejack shrugged. Twilight and I walked outside into the cool night air. We decided to walk to the zoo because Twilight was sure that I was as drunk as she was and didn’t want me driving. She knew I ordered a few drinks,but what she didn’t remember was that she had stolen them every single chance she got. In total, I had only one full drink and that was just a soda.

As we walked through the dimly lit street, I noticed that the streets were completely devoid of any life at all. The only sounds I could hear were the drunken slurs of Twilight. I started feeling a little nervous with every step I took. This was just weird; Canterlot wasn’t that huge, but there was always something going on. We were in a commercial area and it wasn’t even eight yet. Where the hell was everyone? I started to walk a little faster with Twilight staggering behind me.

“There it is!" Twilight hollered snapping me out of my trance.

“What?” I asked. “Oh, right.” Twilight was taking about the zoo.

“Why the fuck is it closed?" Twilight asked.

“Well Twi, its a zoo.”

“So?"

“Typically, zoos aren’t usually open at night."

“But I want to see Mr. Tigger.”

“Who?" I asked. Twilight pointed at a sign in the front of the zoo. There was a picture of a gigantic tiger and it’s name, Mr. Tigger, posted below it. ”Poor thing,”, I thought. A once powerful, courageous and great beast now reduced to a mere zoo attraction with a ridiculously childish name. How the mighty have fallen.

“What do we do now?” Twilight muttered.

“Let’s just go back." I suggested.

“Let’s walk a little bit more.”

I shrugged. “Sure, why the hell not? We may as well walk a little bit further, after all what kind of trouble could that cause?" We continued on until we reached another commercial area near the other side of zoo. “Alright, time to go ba—“

“Help!" cried out a woman’s voice. Twilight and I quickly looked for the source of the noise, but we didn’t find anything. “Oh god, somebody help me!!" the voice cried out again. This time though, I could get a pretty good idea of where the scream was coming from. We ran towards the source of the scream which brought us to an alleyway. In the dim light, I saw two large figures hovering over a smaller figure. The woman.

“Get off of her you fuckers!” I yelled in anger. Adrenaline coursing through my body, I ran ready to fight. As I ran, I saw blood all over the woman. Her neck and chest were completely covered in it. They must have had weapons. I stopped a few feet in case they tried to attack me. Twilight staggered forward next to me. The two attackers lifted themselves up from the woman and started speed walking towards us. I knew it was stupid trying to fight two potentially armed men off as I was about to do, but I just couldn’t let them continue hurting this woman. It was a matter of doing what was right. The figure closest to me was wearing a torn green shirt with khaki pants with a faint picture of a snail on it while the other wore a black shirt with a picture of a pair of scissors with blue jeans. The light now revealed more of their features with every step they took.

The anger I felt overcame my logic. Why would Snips and Snails want to stab her? Was it for money? Or was there an even worse reason? Were they planning on raping her?

Snips and Snails were now fully exposed in the light and all the rage I felt immediately disappeared giving way to horror and confusion. Their features were hideous and repulsive. Their heads appeared to be elongated and their eyes were missing, along with their new tails, smooth heads and dorsal tubes on their backs. Part of Snail’s upper lip was missing, giving him a wide necrotic snarl. While Snip’s chest had various bite marks on it and they were both drooling what appeared to be semen saliva which down right grossed me out to the point of no return. They now started picking up speed almost like a four-legged animal getting ready to run.

Twilight and I started backing away from the two alien-like Snips and Snails. This couldn’t have been real. Things like them doesn’t exist in real life. They were just demons we made up to scare people. They weren’t real, and yet here they were, right in front of us. The strange smell of Cinnamon rolls, cupcakes and pies were lingering in the air and becoming more overwhelming with every step they took. My brain commanded my body to turn and go, to run away from this impossibly real nightmare, but I was frozen. Panic kept me still.

I snapped back to life just before Snips and Snails were within pouncing distance. I turned and sprinted back towards the main street. As I ran, I noticed that Twilight wasn’t with me. I stopped and looked back long enough to see the alien-men and the girl behind me, but no Twilight. I had no idea where she could have gone to. ”Maybe she already escaped,”, I thought. If Twilight was near, I would see her soon. I finally reached the street and quickly turned towards the direction of the zoo. Twilight wasn’t in sight, and I was so distracted by her disappearance that I didn’t hear the sound of someone staggering behind me until it was too late—the source of the sound was a few inches away from me. I turned halfway, and was immediately struck in the head. Knocked out cold, I fell to the hard ground below me, completely motionless. A defenseless meal for the Demons in Black.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3: Sunset’s Conclusion Estimated time remaining: 7 Hours, 45 Minutes